The present invention relates to data processing and to data management systems.
Information technology (“IT”) environments can consist of many different systems performing processes, such as business processes, on common master data. The different systems can be part of the same entity or can be part of different entities, such as vendors or contractors. The master data used for the processes can be stored in a number of different locations, systems, and/or incompatible formats. Branch offices of a company can work largely independently, adopted companies can introduce new software solutions to a group of affiliated companies, systems from different vendors can be linked. Different master data models can make it difficult to integrate business processes in these scenarios.
Master data can become trapped and siloed in different systems. Master data that is not aligned across an IT environment can lead to data redundancies and irrelevant or incorrect information. For example, if two local branches of the an international company each have the same local branch of a second international company as a business partner, each international business partner can be maintained twice, with no correlation between the two “business partner” master data objects. This can result in high costs for redundant multiple content maintenance. Further, business analytics performed with redundant or obsolete information can result in poor business decisions. In the above example, a company-wide analytic process can fail to detect the correlation between the “two” partners, and business value that could be leveraged out of recognizing these business partners as international business partners with two local branches would be lost.